I am curious as to how well we SS/TC owners treat our cars...

With the many different cars I have owned over the years, all of the different auto communities I interacted with had some basic things in common. Those who treat their cars well did 2 primary things on a regular basis....Oil Changes and Car Washes....the frequency and expense put towards each of these being a solid indicator of how well the car was treated overall.

So I now pose the same question to the Cobaltss.net SS/TC owners.

Since I can not post 2 polls in one post, I will have them each be seperate threads.


In the past the standard was to change your oil every 3000 miles. Now with advanced synthetic oils and the "Oil Life indicators" the 3000 mile standard change is becoming far less common.

At what percentage of your oil life remaining do you decide that it is time for an oil change?

Vote in the poll and let's find out one part of how we treat our cars.

 

last few times was 15-18%

 

I just bought mine but I am going to change the oil every 3000 miles or when it hits around 30%, whichever is first within reason.

 

i change mine every 5k miles. figured it would be fine since it is in between the normal 3k and the synthetic 7k max.

 

lol i think some of those percentages are unneeded on the poll.

But yeah i wait till its all the way down haha

 

I get it changed at 40%

 

Haha....for our cars true, but I once knew a guy with a Ysi blown Mustang who would change his every 250 miles. It was ridiculous.

So you never know! Some SS/TC owner could be obsessive like that guy was!

 

dayam every 250....that would be daily for me...i do about every 7k with a filter change around 3k. this is only cuz we run synthetic...if it was the cheap **** i would def do every 2000 miles or so. but these new synthetics really take a beating. so 7500 is my max and the meter ussually reads about 30-40% by then. so its time to change it

 

i change my oil every 4000 miles... and since ive swapped out the ecu some multiple times, i have given up on keeping up with the oil change percentage...

 

10-20; a local Pursuit owner has religiously followed the oil life monitor and just recently supercharged her 2.2. During the work she took pictures of her motor and it looks good as new with absolutely no gunk build-up to speak of. I trust it, it's there for a reason and today's oils don't breakdown as quickly as they used to. 3000 miles (5000km) is always a safe bet, but to give you an idea, here's what my car and OnStar report say and I changed my oil at 4200km the first time (following break-in):

Current Oil Life: 68%
Estimated KM Before Change: 15,400km

Yep, that would be 11,000km out of a single oil change...as long as I'm running the car normal, I see no problems with this.

 

I dont go based off that, I change it at every 3k miles.

 

After doing a TON of research into the exact topic, I found changing it at every 3000 miles pointless. It even states specifically on GM's website that changing oil at every 3000 miles is a thing of the past. They (GM) have millions of dollars invested into this oil life monitor and it's no BS thing either. GM endorses every new car owner to follow that oil monitor and to change it at around 20%. It saves money and pointless wasting of oil.

+1 for new technology.

 

My first boss at GM was friends with the lady who pioneered the algorithm to determine oil life starting in the mid 80s. She had a very hard time selling it to the GM top brass and in fact it took her almost 2 decades to get it fully implemented. The first implementation I think was the mid 90s to mid 2000 where they used her algorithm for the first 5k miles then tripped the oil change regardless of what the algorithm said. They saw that there was no increase in engine failures due to old oil and nowadays it is fully implemented. There is no reason not to go off of it & changing your oil every 3k miles is a waste of money.

 

Since i lost a crank bearing i do not follow it. I now do it every 3-4k no matter what the percentage says.

 

I change it at every 3000-3500 depending on how many track days I have.

 

I start to think about it once I dip below 40% and usually get it done by 35%. Maybe i'll go a little longer since it seems that it will be fine.

 

my first oil change was 1k miles, but i normally change oil in all my car around 2-3k miles or 3-4 months.

 

Mines at like 16%... probably get it done this weekend

 

I kind of follow the monitor, but also check it myself to see that it's not too dirty. Mine is at 40% right now, going on 5,000 miles, so it's getting changed tomorrow.

 

I've seen someone post that they needed to prove oil changes in order to have warranty work done. Has anyone heard of what % or miles they are looking for? After all, using their own launch control, etc. can be called abuse, so can going by their oil life % too far also be abuse??? I wouldn't put it past them.

Then I went and found this...

http://fyi.gmblogs.com/2009/01/qa_wi...fe_system.html

Not sure if you had already seen this, but it's interesting.

 

When i took mine in they said something about showing receipts for oil and filters...which i had....but they never ended up asking for them.

 

Every 3k.

 

When I saw a post about that I got worried cuz I couldn't find the last reciept...but since the previous oil change was only 7k miles ago, it's no big deal

 

Quick question. How do I reset the oil life percentage after I change my oil? I just changed it and it still says the same thing so I think I need to reset it..

 

Turn the key to accs. and press the gas 3-5 times... That is much easier then the button dance.